The dialectic and the tragedy of citizenship

Date

2008-03-01

Author

Yegen, Mesut

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This essay aims to review the contemporary debate on citizenship with a focus on the present dilemma of the institution of citizenship between equality and difference. Citizenship today seems to have become stuck between a categorical commitment to either universalism or particularism. It is as if there is no alternative but to opt for either assimilation (national citizenship) or group fetishism (the end of citizenship). In this essay, however, I argue that citizenship today is not as helpless as it looks. I suggest that rethinking the categories of equality and universality may save modern citizenship from this dilemma between equality and difference. Perceiving equality as equality of differences and not homogenisation and pursuing a contingent notion of universality may, I argue, be of some use in coping with the dilemma in question.

Subject Keywords

Political Science and International Relations

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63458

Journal

EUROPEAN POLITICAL SCIENCE

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210149

Collections

Department of Sociology, Article

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Citation Formats

M. Yegen, “The dialectic and the tragedy of citizenship,” EUROPEAN POLITICAL SCIENCE, pp. 98–112, 2008, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/63458.